worst pinball game ever

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in an arcade with a few other people who were probably around my age or five or ten years younger. We were playing pinball. I was standing near the pinball machine, watching instead of playing. I may have been watching a tall, beautiful, black-haired woman playing.

We then had to go upstairs. We probably went into a movie theater, but I think we were there for some kind of business meeting. A movie may have played.

The meeting was over, but I was now by myself. I took an escalator down from the upper level to the ground floor, where the arcade was. A huge window wall to my left let in a lot of grey light.

I was back down in the arcade. I stood in front of a pinball machine. I may have been surprised by the fact that the pinball machine started up a game without my having put a quarter inside. Somewhere off to my right and behind me, my mom was talking with some other person, maybe about some kind of illness, maybe a mental illness, my mom thought I had.

I started playing. I couldn't figure how to launch the ball out of the side slot and into the game area. But the ball launched itself. The ball bounced around in the game area and then fell toward the hole at the bottom.

The hole wasn't very big, it was located near the side slot, instead of in the middle of the bottom of the game area, and the paddle had the ability to stretch across the hole entirely. But either I couldn't figure out how to use the paddle, or else I was way too slow to use the paddle, and the ball fell right into the hole.

I got another ball, which appeared in the side slot presently. The ball launched into the game area, and somehow I, without even knowing how -- or really whether! -- it happened, got an extra ball.

The ball that had gotten me an extra ball disappeared, and another ball appeared in the side slot. But it launched up the side slot only weakly, then falling back down toward the bottom of the side slot. It actually fell out of the machine altogether, through some hole like a coin-return hole, then tumbled through the floor. I may have picked up the fallen ball and somehow put it back into the machine.

In the meantime, the extra ball I had gained was already bouncing around in the game area. I saw it just as it was falling toward the hole. There was a little bumper near the hole. The ball bounced against the bumper. I thought this would save the ball, or at least give me points or something special. But it didn't. The ball fell down through the hole. I didn't even use my paddle to stop it.

not quite hired; nephew's medical dilemma; a sculpture in new york

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was at a job interview. It was supposed to be a professional place, but it looked more like the backstage area of a theater. It seemed to be full of worktables and cluttered everywhere with colored fabrics and trinkets. There was one little office where my interviewer, MH, sat. The room was buried within the clutter of the rest of the place.

MH had decided that he wouldn't be able to hire me. He seemed to be disappointed in my interview. I walked away from the office, rather disappointed in myself and depressed. But only a few seconds later (though it may have felt, in some way, like it was a day or two later), MH walked out and implied that he would like to hire me after all.

MH set up some kind of desk space for me on one of the work tables by clearing off some of the piles of colored fabrics and laying down a laptop. MH hadn't quite told me he'd like me to work for him. Instead, he told me something like he needed me to stick around for a while. He said he needed some kind of data entered into a system before some event occurred, like the visit of some clients. He was just asking me if I could do this project as a favor to him. But I understood that if I did this project well, I'd probably stick around for even longer.

A couple other guys now started filtering into the room. They looked young, like recent college graduates. One of them seemed to be dressed in business casual clothes. But at least one other guy was dressed in a strange, but somewhat fashionable way. One of these guys was very short and pale. He had slightly shaggy, black hair. He wore pale, greyish jeans and a pale, greyish, denim jacket. Something else about his attire looked very clunky an 1980s-style.

The young men, when they saw me, seemed to be jealous of me, wondering whether I wasn't here to take away their jobs. I tried to make a point, apparently through my body language, that I was here to do a completely different job, not to take anybody's job.

To prove this, at one point, I stood up right when the grey denim boy was walking past me. I may have been planning to show him something. Instead, the young man became a little frightened of me and began walking backwards as I walked forward. But somehow we began talking, and eventually we were talking either about something we both liked (like some kind of art) or about some kind of project I'd now volunteered to help the grey denim boy with.

I may have been a little worried, now, about helping the grey denim boy with a project. It seemed like he was kind of weird. I didn't know if everybody else would think I was weird for helping this boy with something. But then I realized that most everybody else here also dressed weird. So nobody would think anything about it.

The grey denim boy and I had cleared off some of the clutter of colored fabrics from a work table. There was now a whole cookie sheet of sweet-looking desserts. The desserts were like scone-sized globs of maple, pecans, and sugar, all clumped and crystallized together. There wasn't any crust or pastry or anything attached to these sugary globs.

The whole team of workers was now, apparently, gathering together to have some kind of a team meal and meeting. We gathered at a table in the center of the room. There were little spaces cleared out for each of us, so we could sit down our meals, or desserts, and our laptops. But the clutter was so high that we couldn't see around it to the other people sitting at the table with us.

The meeting never seemed to start or finish. Instead, people seemed to take forever to sit down, and then they'd stand right back up and walk away. I sat at my space, waiting for instructions or something. I thought about eating my dessert. But I felt bad about doing so. I knew that eating too much during the day would make my body act weird. I was trying to figure whether I could somehow work eating the dessert into a schedule that would be okay for my body.

Dream #2

I was in an elevator with an older man. The man was white, stood tall, wore a nice business suit, and had fine, white hair. The elevator we were in was going straight up at first. But then it began going upward and forward, diagonally, like we were traveling in an elevator car, but along the tracks of an escalator.

We were, I knew, going up to the 23rd (or 28th?) floor. I knew that my youngest nephew had just been admitted to the hospital. He was sick, possibly with a pulmonary illness. The old man and I were coming to visit my nephew. I believe that we understood, at this point, that nobody else in the family knew about my nephew's condition, including my sister and my mom, who lived with and took care of my nephew.

The doctors wanted to give my nephew some medication. But the doctors didn't know what medication to give him. They apparently couldn't get a hold of my sister or mother, so they called me. The old man and I were now standing just outside the hospital.

I got the message from the doctors via text on my phone. I didn't know how to respond to it. I thought that before I responded to anything, it would be a good idea to try and get a hold of my mother and sister. After some trying, I may have gotten a hold of my mother and sister.

In fact, my sister may now have been sitting near me, on some brick ledge surrounding a raised planting area that held some small trees and shrubs. I may have tried to make a point to my sister that I hadn't been trying to control her life or her son's life by engaging in a conversation with the doctors.

I "said" (or just "felt to" my sister) that the doctors had contacted me, and that I was surprised they'd done so. I "said" that I had only been planning to respond to the doctors because I hadn't been able to get a hold of my sister or mom. I thought that if I couldn't get a hold of anybody, I'd have to respond. The situation seemed too important. It seemed like someone needed to make a decision sooner rather than later, to make sure my nephew was taken care of.

Dream #3

I was looking at a book of sculptures by Japanese artists. The artists all had a style very much like the style for which Takashi Murakami is famous: plastic-looking, cartoon-themed, and visually bubbly and complex. But a lot of the artists didn't color their works. The works would largely be all white.

The book had photos of these sculptures in stores all over the world. Some of the stores may have been cleared out to become temporary exhibit spaces for larger collections of art works. Other stores may have carried on with their business, with just one large piece of sculpture placed in the middle of a store.

The final photo I looked at was of a store I think I recognized as The Disney Store in New York City -- even though it was nothing like The Disney Store. It looked more like a bookstore. There were bookshelves spaced widely apart. The store was kind of small. The walls were barn-red. The ceilings were high. In the center of this store stood a tall, white pedestal with a small, white sculpture of a bulging-headed, Mickey Mouse-like character.

Even though I was looking at a book, the picture began moving panning toward the side, as if I were watching a video on a TV or computer. I felt like I knew the view I had been looking at. But now that the view was shifting, I was feeling less and less familiar with it. The idea of what place I was looking at had only slowly been dawning on me. Now I was losing my focus on what I was looking at.

At the same time, two girls, maybe both Asian girls, began talking near me. One of the girls was my friend. The other girl was my friend's friend, though she may have been my friend as well. My friend and I may have been on some kind of trip together. My friend and her friend were now talking about the various attractions in whatever city we were visiting. (Oddly enough, we may have been standing in the same place that the photo in the book was showing.)

I needed to get back to the first view this moving photo had shown. I put my finger down on the paper and swiped my finger over to the left. The photo, which had been panning off to the right, now moved left (I think). It now reached the original spot. This view looked mostly like the original view, even though I think there were some changes to the view that looked a little uncanny and frustrating to me.

I suddenly called out to the two girls, "Look! It's the Disney Store in New York! I can recognize it!" The girls may have looked at the photo for a moment, not really paying attention to what I was saying. Then they may have looked away. I had felt like it was really important for me to show that I knew the view. I was trying to prove to the girls that I had lived in New York, and that I knew the sights of New York. I was starting to think that nobody really believed anymore that I had ever lived in New York.

flood party; "i'm a virgin star"

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was inside some huge indoor area that was flooded. The place was huge, like a convention center, but it somehow had the look of a living room. It was like, above the surface of the water, there were dry areas, along the walls of the huge space, that looked like little living rooms.

The water had risen to its crest, I believe. But it was still surging and waving a little. I was in the middle of it all. It was hard to keep my head above water after the little surges and waves. It was like I was being pulled down deep below the surface.

There were a man above the surface and a woman below the surface. Both people, I believe, were Asian, probably young, and both good looking. I think I'd see the woman when I'd get sucked below the surface. I'd think the woman was kind and pretty. But the man, when I'd come above the surface, would tell me not to let the woman suck me under. He told me the woman would keep me under if I let her suck me under.

I was now wary of the woman. I got sucked under again. But I saw the woman again, and somehow she convinced me to stay under the water for a little bit longer. She was really cute. She wore a tight, leopard print tank top and tiny, blue jean shorts.

I had descended all the way down to the bottom of the water. I was now afraid. I had done what the man had told me not to do. Would I drown? I could feel that I'd need air soon.

But now I found I could breathe underwater. I looked around. It was like there was a little living room down here. I was surprised. But, I thought, it looked like the perfect place to have parties. Probably, I thought, this woman invites people over all the time to have wild parties. I thought that now that I lived down here with the woman, I'd have to deal with all these annoying wild parties.

The woman, I knew, had swum up to the surface. I kept waiting for her to return. I think I really wanted to see her legs again, in those tiny jean shorts.

Dream #2

I was driving a vehicle with my brother at night. We were driving down a road like a main road that ran just along the suburban residential neighborhood my family lived in when I was in high school. The vehicle I drove was something like a mix between some sort of cargo truck and a motor home. But the front area, the cabin, seemed somehow to be separated from the motor home part. The cabin also seemed to have two or more seats behind the front row of seats. My brother sat in one of the backseats.

At some point in time my mother got into the car. She may have come in through the driver's side door. But I was still driving, while my mom sat in the front passenger's seat. My mom may have started making comments about my driving, probably about how she thought I didn't know where I was going.

I tried to ignore my mom and just keep my thoughts on the road. But now my mom had pulled some of my notebook journals out of a book bag or backpack I had lying on the floor. She started making comments about how some of the stuff I had written was inappropriate. She may even have torn pages out of the notebooks or threatened to tear the pages out.

I was really angry that my mom had messed around with my notebooks. I told her to put my notebooks away and leave my stuff alone. Now she was really offended. She may have been silent in a really sulky way, or she may have said some really needling things to me, to make me feel bad for having criticized her.

I did feel bad, now. But I wasn't going to apologize. I wasn't going to lose focus of the road either. My mom had no right just going through my stuff the way she did.

I knew where I needed to get now. I knew I needed to get to a certain street (I can't remember) in a certain neighborhood. I knew that no way would be quick. But I knew there was a somewhat direct way, given where we were. I knew I had to go up to a certain street and turn left. But I could only turn left on that street if I was paying attention the whole time. I kept myself in a frame of mind where I felt like I was paying attention.

Suddenly, though, there were a bunch of women walking through the street in the opposite direction from my vehicle. There were maybe twenty of them. They all looked, I guess, like Gretel in the fairy tale of "Hansel and Gretel." They wore white caps with hook-shaped twists coming down over the ears and then back up. They wore yellow-skirted dresses with black tops and white shirts underneath. The tops seemed to be laced somehow. They all seemed to be part of some club. And they were all walking at random through the street.

I was doing everything I could to dodge all the Gretel girls and to keep my focus on where I needed to turn. But at one point my mom grabbed the steering wheel. She forced the steering wheel over so that the vehicle pulled all the way over to the left (my left) side of the road. It seemed like we almost hit a few Gretel girls as we veered to the side of the road. But they all seemed to have gotten out of our way.

My mom had now made me a nervous wreck. I stopped the car. My mom was yelling and screaming at me about how I'd almost hit all those girls. The vehicle was swaying too and fro. Even though I was still in the big vehicle, it actually felt like I was on something that I was having a hard time balancing, like a motorcycle. I told my mom that I was done driving while she was in the vehicle. If she wanted us to go anywhere, she could drive.

I pulled the vehicle over into some dirt lot, which may have been an RV lot. My mom and brother and I got out. My sister may now also have been with us, as well as a couple other family members, maybe some of my nephews. All the lights in the vehicle were on, and the headlights of the vehicle were also left on.

As we got out of the vehicle, my ex-girlfriend H came walking up to me. She was holding some books or notebooks. She said she was so happy finally to see everybody in my family. Everybody else was walking away from the vehicle. So I told H that I'd introduce her to everybody in a moment. She may have tried interacting with them already, although they hadn't seemed to interact with her. I realized I hadn't told my family anything about H. So they didn't know her to interact with her.


H's lips were all messed up. It was like the flesh of her lips had been replaced with something like a dried pudding, or maybe scabs. Her lips didn't puff out, either. They were flat, even a tiny bit sunken in.


H and I headed up into the vehicle. The living area part of the vehicle could now be accessed through the back end of the cabin. There was a kind of tall bed. I had my bookbag on the bed.


H was asking me something about how my life was going. I was trying to explain to her that my job in Colorado really wasn't working out, and that I had to find something else to do. I told her something about some project somewhere. It was some kind of project, maybe scientific, that somebody had approached me about without my having made any first contact with them. But it ended up sounding like something I really wanted to do.


But when I'd thought about doing it, I explained to H, I hesitated. I'd come back to Colorado to be with my family. This assignment would take me out of Colorado. So I didn't know if it really would be right for me to do it.


I knew that I had all the documents relating to the project in my book bag. I could see in my mind's eye the cover of some book. The cover was blue, with a white drawing of one hemisphere of a globe. There were possibly white drawings of something like olive leafs crossing below the drawing of the globe.


I thought if I could show the documentation to H, she could see what I was talking about. Maybe she'd be impressed that this organization contacted me directly to ask me to work for them. But when I pulled the documents out of my bookbag -- I saw that the offer had expired! I was supposed to reply by a certain time. I'd missed the window. The offer was no longer good!


I threw the papers down on the ground and began crying. I told H, "It doesn't matter anymore! It doesn't matter! It's all over with! I can't do anything!" I walked over to the windshield of the vehicle. I looked down into the light from the headlights to see if I could find my family.


Everything went black. I may have still been having some sort of conversation with H. The conversation may have continued as the light faded back in. I found myself in a subway station, something like the Times Square subway station. I was heading up out of the station.


But I was stuck behind three young men. The men were either white or white and Hispanic. They wore baggy t-shirts, cocked baseball caps, and baggy jean shorts. They were walking in all kinds of weird ways. At some point either I may have wondered whether they had something wrong with their legs, or else they may actually have had something wrong with their legs.


I went up either an escalator or staircase behind these guys. It was hard to get around them. I got around them as everybody passed through the exit turnstiles of the station. But then we all turned left through some small, kind of dumpy-looking shopping area. The guys had managed to loop around some column where nobody had been walking and get right in front of me again. They were still walking around all crazy and laughing with each other, like they enjoyed slowing down people's walking. But I don't think they were aware of me in particular.

Finally a lot of us who had exited the subway were heading up an escalator into a shopping center. I knew I couldn't stand waiting behind these guys at all anymore. I had to get up ahead of them before we all got jammed onto this escalator. So I maneuvered my way ahead of the guys. The guys all seemed surprised that I'd gotten past them. Maybe I'd done it a little forcibly or awkwardly. The guys may have been offended. I hoped not. I didn't want to get in a fight with them later on.

I was now in a real hurry just to get out of wherever I was trying to get out of or to get to wherever I was trying to get to. I also wanted to get enough distance between me and the guys that they couldn't catch back up with me and pass me later on, maybe making some comment like "Why didn't you just stay behind us, if we were going to pass you anyway?"

The escalator was really steep. But I was running up it two steps at a time. I could even sense that the guys behind me were kind of amazed that I was so serious about getting wherever I needed to go.

There were a lot fewer people on the escalator by the time I got to the top of it. I was now on the floor of what looked like a shopping mall. But I knew I still had to keep going up. There was another escalator. I had to run to and up that escalator as well. This escalator was even steeper than the last. There was probably nobody other than me on this escalator. It was really difficult for me to get to the top of it. But I managed.

I was on another floor like a floor in a shopping mall. I could see another escalator. This one was really small, and the steps on it almost looked like steps on a regular old staircase. I ran to it. But getting up it was unbelievably difficult. I was already extremely exhausted. And the steps were so steep, it was almost like climbing backwards. And -- I could see, just beyond this escalator, that I had one last escalator to climb -- a tall one -- even steeper than the rest!

At the top of the small escalator I decided to take a break. I may have determined that I was far, far ahead of the guys now and that I didn't need to worry about them anymore. I was on another floor like the floor of a shopping mall. I sat down on a rather nice bench which seemed to be cushioned and upholstered in something like brown fake suede.

Off to my right was a shop with a dark front. It looked like a clothing store inside -- some kind of dimly lit, trendy clothing store, perhaps. But on the left (my left) side of the shop front was a slim, glass window with a TV screen.

The TV screen was playing some music video. The music video was colorful, with yellows and pinks and whites, and I liked it a lot. It may have looked like it was from the 1980s. But I can't remember it now. But I had the ability to control the TV, maybe by a game joystick. And I played the video two or three times in a row.

A second music video now played. It also looked like it was from the 1980s. But the color scheme was a lot more drab and sinister. There were a couple, a man and a woman, watching the screen now. They must have come from inside the shop. As the couple watched the screen I realized that the space around the screen was  filled with something like a Japanese scroll, patterned with something like orange and green flowers, very blocky and circular, on a white background.

After a moment, though, they walked away from the screen. The couple were white, somewhat well-off looking, and maybe in their late thirties or early forties. The woman was pretty. The man was overweight, balding, with a red beard and a little red hair and eyeglasses. Both the man and the woman were wearing kimonos. One wore a purple kimono with white designs. Another wore an orange kimono with white designs.

I was kind of surprised that an older white couple would be walking through the mall wearing kimonos. But now I saw another white couple walking out of the clothing shop wearing kimonos. One of the kimonos was mint green. Then there were three or four more white people, these ones single or in a group of friends, walking out of the shop and also wearing kimonos! I was surprised, but I probably just assumed that this was the new fashion.

I went back to the music video. It was finishing, and I wanted to replay it. But a man who had sat down beside me while I'd been looking at all the kimono people now had the joystick. He wanted to play some other music video.

I figured that would be cool. I'd gotten kind of obsessed with the first music video. And I didn't want to get obsessed with the second music video, too. But I would have, if this man hadn't been here to stop me. Besides, it would be nice to see someone else's tastes in music. You always learned cool, new artists that way.

But the man was having a hell of a time figuring out how to get a music video to play. I'm not sure if he'd made me feel like I shouldn't help him. But I didn't help him. I just waited for him to figure out how to work the joystick so he could play a music video. But after a moment, I realized it was going to take him a really long time to figure things out.

I stood up and walked away from the area. It was like I was in the kitchen of some kind of big, but run-down house. But the kitchen was supposed to be more like the living room of the house. There was a tall stairway leading up to some place that I felt like I needed to get to. So I headed toward the staircase.

But the man, sensing that I was annoyed with his having taken control of the joystick and then having no idea of what to do with it, but still wanting to keep me around -- just to control me, I guess -- called after me, in a kind of loose, but menacing tone, "Hey, stay upstairs." The man meant that I should stay on the floor I was currently on. Apparently there was a downward staircase as well as the upward one, though I couldn't see it. The man thought I was taking the downward staircase, but he didn't want me to.

I knew it wasn't that he didn't want me to go downstairs. It was that he didn't want me to leave this floor -- his sphere of control. But I went upstairs anyway. I figured that if the man bugged me about it later, I'd just tell him that I thought when he'd told me to stay upstairs he'd simply meant that I shouldn't go downstairs.

The staircase was long and steep, and it got dimmer and dimmer as I went up. Finally I was in a small room, kind of like a bedroom. It was really cluttered and dim, though there was a light coming from some other room -- apparently a tiny staircase that went up into an attic -- off to my right.

I realized this was my old friend Y's bedroom. I don't know if Y went on vacation for a little while or went to live somewhere for a longer time. But she'd left a lot of stuff here. She had a bunch of old movies, books, and music that I was either familiar with and liked a lot or that I'd been curious about but had never gotten a chance to check out.

There was a bookshelf along the left wall. I went as close to it as I could -- it seemed to be blocked off by a bunch of haphazardly placed and stacked furniture -- cushiony, upholstered with some kind of fake, blue suede or crushed velvet material. But I could reach over the furniture to one of the upper shelves.

I pulled down a few DVD cases. The DVDs were anime DVDs. The titles all seemed almost, but not quite, familiar to me. It was like they were all series based very closely on series I was familiar with, but with just a few odd, unsettling differences. The titles also seemed to be like that -- almost familiar, but with weird, unsettling differences.

One of the DVD cases showed a tall, long-legged woman with short brown hair, and wearing a short, yellow tank top and tiny, yellow shorts, leaning her bottom against the left side of the DVD case and carrying a fancy parasol in one of her hands.

I was interested in one of the DVDs. I thought I'd play it. I was now watching it -- probably in my mind's eye, although my mind's eye had expanded into my full view. The cartoon dealt with a young demon character. The character was young and naive, but he looked old, almost like Cherry in Urusei Yatsura. There was another demon who looked like the young demon, except that he was much older, purple, more demon-like, and naked.

The setting was some big, empty, wooden room, like some kind of traditional Japanese room. But it was apparently supposed to be used for washing dishes. The young demon had made a mistake and had broken a dish. The older demon knew how to play on the young demon's sense of guilt. He wanted to young demon to go away. So he was trying to make the young demon feel like the broken dish would put him in a very dangerous, or at least shameful, situation with the master.

The young demon believed this and was about to leave the master's residence. But some accident occurred. It was like, without the young demon's will, the young demon's magic created, or at least assisted, the situation. Every plate in the room was swept up, broken, shattered into tiny, tiny pieces of dust. The plate dust spun and spun around the room, like a cyclone, eventually whirling in purple clouds against the walls.

The young demon himself was pushed back against the walls. It was almost like the cloud of plate dust was pulverizing him into the wall, integrating him into the wall. But eventually the cloud of plate dust subsided. Everything seemed to be okay. Either all the plates were fixed, or else all the plates had reconfigured themselves into something that was enough value to replace the plates as they had been before.

The young demon stepped out from the wall. He now looked like the older demon. He was purple, more demon-like than human, more featureless, with purple wings coming off his back, and naked. He now understood -- or at least the audience understood -- that the older demon had been playing around with the young demon this whole time. The one dish the young demon had broken didn't matter. The older demon had made a lot more mistakes than that in his life. And now the older demon was paying for all his tricks.

The young demon looked over to a doorway that was on the wall to his right. The wall around the doorway now looked like a tree trunk. And now, embedded in the wall, where the canopy of this tree would have been, was a gigantic plate. The plate was veined over with tree roots, but other than that it was whole, embedded into the wall. The young demon understood that that was what had happened, either to the plates that had been in the plate dust cyclone, or else to the plates that the old demon had broken.

And now the young demon saw the older demon's face printed onto the giant plate, drawn onto it like one of Leonardo's old drawings. The young demon knew that the older demon was trapped on the plate forever. The older demon looked angry. The young demon knew that if the older demon could ever escape, he would try to find a way to hurt the young demon. But the young demon knew that the older demon would never escape.

There was now a strange scene, showing, somehow, the torture the older demon was going through. There was a close up on the demon's face. It pulled closer and closer in, until it got up to the demon's eye. Then, inside the demon's eye, the demon's face reappeared. The view pulled closer and closer to that demon's eye. Then the demon's face appeared in that eye. This tunnel effect happened again and again, until finally the view approached an eye that was shut. The eye opened -- and it was blank!

The cartoon faded to black. I now realized I was watching, not a DVD, but a VCR tape. The cartoon I'd been watching had been dubbed onto this tape by my friend Y. I now waited to see what the next thing was that my friend Y had dubbed onto this tape.

An experimental film faded into view. I knew that the film was by an experimental filmmaker both Y and I liked quite a bit. The basic theme of the film was showing the filmmaker's daughters. There would be an old, black and white photo of one of the daughters as a child. Then a superimposed, color film image of the daughter would fade into view. The daughter would be moving, probably doing some sort of repetitive motion that the filmmaker was accustomed to see her doing.

The film may have shown one older daughter and then the youngest daughter. As the film showed the youngest daughter, I reflected on how pretty the girl had been as a little girl. Although she was pretty as she'd gotten older, something about her face had changed. She wasn't overweight. But something about her face had made her seem overweight. (I'm sorry for the shallow thought.)

The film now faded away and I was looking at the youngest daughter in real life. She was in some bathroom in some apartment or hotel on some high floor. I stood just outside the bathroom, looking up to the woman, more as if I were a small child than myself.

The woman was maybe nineteen or twenty years old. She was tall, with tan skin, a kind of athletic build, and short, blonde and brown hair in a squarish, boyish style. She wore a white tank top, maybe with another, colored, tank top beneath it.

The woman was putting on blue eye shadow and practicing making sexy faces in the mirror. I had the idea that the woman was making sexy faces in hopes of seducing a woman. I felt like the woman really didn't like boys. But the way she was making sexy faces was really turning me on. I had to talk to her.

So, hoping to start out neutral and see how far I could get from there, I asked the woman something about film making. The woman, instead of facing the mirror, was now standing behind the bathroom counter, in the spot where the mirror had been. She was really dressed up, and now her hair was long, probably done up in an upward style, She wore a mask that looked like blue eyeshadow, except that it went straight up, like her eyelids were poking all the way up to the top of her forehead.

The woman could tell that I was only talking innocent to get some sort of starting point with her, and that I was really looking to seduce her. So, in order to throw me off and make me understand she didn't and wouldn't like me, she told me, "I'm a virgin star!"

I understood and left the woman alone, although I did seem to be impressed that someone as sexy as she was could be a virgin star. We were now heading out of the hotel or apartment building, walking toward the front doors through a airy and bright, but rather empty, foyer. I stopped about halfway through the foyer and watched as the woman met up with a few of her friends -- male and female. The friends all looked tall, well-dressed, and well-off. I still felt as tiny as a child, maybe only about 75cm tall.

At some point everybody in the group turned around to look at me. Either one of the group asked me something about David Bowie, or I asked the group something about David Bowie. It immediately became apparent that I knew David Bowie. And now, because of this, I went from being totally ignored to being paid attention to by everybody in the group.

flying through a walking town

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in some large building, coming up an escalator with one or two older businessmen and a young woman who was probably a businesswoman. We were coming up from the basement. The escalator bank was huge and spacious, like there were a whole lot of escalators all in a row. The space above the escalators was also wide and open, like in the atrium for a huge skyscraper.

One of the older men was DR, the head of the department at one of my old jobs. The two men were educating the woman on something. I'm not sure how I was involved in the conversation. But the teaching eventually had something to do with the appearance of tall buildings from other tall buildings.

We headed up on the escalators to a place where the walls were all glass. We looked out to a cityscape. The sky was heavy, soft, and dark grey. We looked out on a cityscape that was filled with nice, new buildings. Everything looked vast and monumental. But none of the buildings looked like skyscrapers.

DR said, "Oh, well, that's because we aren't high enough. Once we get high enough you'll see how tall the buildings look, as well as vast." But I could tell that DR was actually a little embarrassed by the fact that the buildings that had come into our view weren't skyscrapers. After all, the woman was supposed to be getting a lesson in how tall builings looked from tall buildings.

DR said, "For instance, if you look up the side of this building, you'll get an incredible feeling of vastness." Our vision was directed to our left, where we could, apparently, see up the side of the building we were in. It was like the escalator bank was in a glass atrium attached to the side of the building proper.

The building was made of white marble, and it had a very square appearance, like some of the buildings in Washington, DC. For some reason I figured that DR had made reference to this building as if it were the Schwarzmann building of the New York Public Library. DR had seemed to imply that even though the building wasn't tall, that if you looked up the side of it, you'd feel as overwhelmed by its size as if it were a tall building.

I didn't quite agree with DR when he said this. But it was almost like I had been saying it. It was like I had been trying to teach the woman this whole time -- and constantly making a fool of myself by being wrong all the time! So I thought I must have been trying to make up some silly idea about perception, so that even though I couldn't show the woman a tall building, I could at least make her feel like she should feel like she was looking at a tall building.

I was now walking up a steep slope, up to the side of the NYPL building. The slope was tiered with big, square stones, which were topped with heavy soil and vegetation. It was narrow walking sometimes, and I felt like I could lose my balance and fall down the slope. It was a sunny day, but the slope was in the cool, grey shade of the massive building's side. There were some other people out on the slope.

We were now all walking along the side of the building, walking up toward the front of the building. I could tell we were all part of some group, like a volunteer group. In front of the building was a wide, marble promenade. People were scattered all over the promenade, kneeling before small planters full of new flowers.

I walked a bit more, possibly trying to find what my place was among all these volunteers. I got past the front doors of the building. There was now another slope, off to my left. This was a golden lawn with a big tree about halfway down it. There were a few volunteers -- mostly attractive women -- working on putting in a few rows of flower beds along the slope.

I wanted to go down along the slope to see what was going on. But instead of walking down the slope, I flew over it. I hovered down over the garden and the women. I could hear the women's conversations.

I think I was a little surprised at first that I could fly. But then I told myself to control my flight and experiment with it. But, for some reason, I think I got too focused on flying around near the branches of the trees. I think this may have been because I was a little shy around the girls. I felt like some of their conversation had to do with making fun of me.

I think, though, that at some points I was flying really high up into the air and then back down. I think I had done this while asking myself, If I were in a dream and flying, how would I take advantage of the situation?

The girls were now really trying to get my attention. But it was like they were only doing it as a joke. So I turned away from them. But just as I was turning away, I saw some guy coming up the slope. He was an attractive, muscular man. It was like he was the guy all these girls loved. But he was only wearing a blue, sleeveless shirt and a pair of briefs. And the briefs were pink with blue lining, like a pair of boy-short panties for girls!

I could tell that the women had only been trying to get my attention so they could show their man that they could make other boys interested in them. They knew this kind of thing amused the man. So, without giving the women and man any attention, I flew up the slope and off to my left.

The slope ended at some fence. I flew over the fence and found myself in a quiet, suburban neighborhood shaded by big, thick-canopied trees. I landed on the road and started walking.

For some reason I either thought that I was in Portugal or that, since I had transported myself -- somehow -- from the NYPL to this quiet, suburban neighborhood, that I could transport myself anywhere, even Portugal. I heard a voice in my head start talking about how Portugal was "a good walking city." (?! - The whole country is a city?)

I thought that I would love to go walking through a good walking city. But now I felt a bunch of pains in my feet. I pulled off my shoes and turned them upside down, dumping some small rocks and pennies out of my shoes. I put my shoes back on and started walking again. But now my legs felt so heavy that I wasn't sure I'd be able to walk very much farther.